You have been outbid!......

With the continued transition of our consumer world into the cyber world one company has really drawn the population and kept them. Ebay, an online auction site has exploded into a multi-million dollar company that sells anything from toast that looks like the Queen Mary to two door Chevy Tahoes. Before I had tried out the whole buying process on eBay, I for some reason looked negatively at those who were obsessed with it. It is possible that my feelings here directly relate to the idea of ingroup and outgroup; I didn't know how the system worked and didn't use it thus it seemed foreign to me and I labeled it as bad. However, when I first entered the eBay world I became obsessed....FAST. This site kidnaps you before you even know what you have got yourself into and before you even have time to look back. I constantly found myself questioning why I continued to bid on items and were somewhat useless to me. It turns out I had become somewhat addicted to the site just like those people I had previously looked down upon. Ironic?

eBay, is one of the best examples one can use to discuss what we(COMM245 class) and Wallace have labeled as a source of Problematic Internet Use. The fact that myself and others look at our behavior and question why we continue to bid and/or even look on the site fulfills the definition of compulsive internet use that Braithwaite, Waldron & Finn label as indicative of Internet Addiction Disorder. Continuing with what Braithwaite, Waldron & Finn discuss, one reason eBay might be addictive is the fact that it gives its customers a sense of control. Consumers know how much they are spending and can control what they bid as well has knowing the seller is trustworthy ( i.e. the seller rating). This supports the notion that those with a high internal locus of control will spend more time online. Additionally, the idea of operant conditioning is ever present in the activity on eBay. The idea here is that when behavior is rewarded on a variable schedule, it is difficult to extinguish. People do not always win the items they bid on, either because the price goes to high or they are just not at a computer when the timing is prime. Therefore the winning occurs sporadically thus becoming not only addictive but much harder to stop. One can also note that eBay definitely has an advantage in the area of "newbie-disease." The idea here being that when a new consumer enters the site they don't know exactly how fast they can become addicted or to what ridiculous extremes their bidding can reach.

Recently my mother has taken to buying jewelry online; do you have any idea how much jewelry is on eBay!? I have watched her not even slowly become engrossed in her computer and the day pass by without her getting anything done and sometimes without her having talked to anyone. This example I pose because it directly supports the ideas of Davis, Flett & Besser (2002) which posit 4 predictors of problematic internet use: diminished impulse control, loneliness/depression, social comfort and distraction/procrastination. The idea of diminished impulse control is that the we begin to think about activities online a lot when we are offline and doing other things. eBay and my mother provide an excellent example of this as I frequently found my mother in the middle of doing chores (i.e. laundry, shopping..etc.) and stopping because she remembered her time was almost up on an eBay item and she had to get back to watch it. I can even remember multiple times over breaks when we had to plan dinner outings or other trips around the time that she had to be back to bid on an item. While I do thing my mother has gone a little crazy with the site, I do understand some of her extensive use. Having recovered from a serious cancer case she is always thinking about her next doctors appointment and the eBay bidding site provides a distraction. All the time she is on the site she is avoiding time in which she would be pondering her health. Not only does this show an example of one of the 4 predictors of problematic internet use but it is also an individual difference. My mother has a pre-existing problem that cause internet addictions. Being sick, she also did her best to stay out of the public eye because it made her more self-conscious of her hair loss during chemo and because she wanted to avoid getting any other minor sicknesses while her immune system was weak. Therefore I could say that this led to feelings of loneliness/depression which is another one of the predictors of internet addiction. On a whole my mother's prior state made her more susceptible to the possibilities of problematic internet disorder. It is interesting how her time online has slowly deteriorated since she fully recovered.....Do we have any information of predictors of recovery from problematic internet use?

This is one of the areas of the internet I find extremely interesting. Nowadays society is so technologically oriented that one can go a whole day solely communicating with people via text, email, and instant messaging. Do these fulfill are needs for not being lonely or is it the actual physical presence of a person that is important.

On another note, it is interesting to look at the corporate work world right now. Many high level associates have portable email devices be it a Palm or a Blackberry. My father has been known to have what we call, " blackberry thumb;" that is he is constantly spinning the wheel on his phone to check if there is any new email. In this way he has not only become addicted to the internet but also to work. This has become a major problem for people today, when they retire they become confused what to do with themselves as they have put their whole selves into a company. It is clear my dad might be one of the cases as I specifically remember a day when he became obsessed with the fact that " there have been no emails today. All is quiet." It was like he yearned for the emails to feel some level of importance, almost as if it made him feel lonely/depressed that people were not emailing and that the act of incoming emails made him feel socially comfortable.

As technology continues to develop even further I believe we will see even greater problems with internet addiction. I mean look.....we can already pre-order our groceries online, thus avoiding any social contact what so ever.....will this increase our loneliness and thus our degree of addiction? It is a cycle that doesn't seem close to being broken.

Best-WB